


The Haunting of Ray Palmer's Libido

by Seiberwing



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Mick Rory, Asexual/Nonasexual Relationship, Ghosts, Historical Homosexuality, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Open Relationship, Relationship Negotiation, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 08:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14516757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiberwing/pseuds/Seiberwing
Summary: Ray wants to be a good and loyal boyfriend. Ray's vibrant sex drive does not. Mick just wants Ray to stop taking cold showers every morning when history's second fanciest gay is standingright there. Vague sequel toHow Do I Light Your Fire (Without an Arson Charge)?.





	The Haunting of Ray Palmer's Libido

_Oh no, he’s hot_ , thought Ray as he tackled an extremely attractive man to the ground. Ten feet above him, an invisible form clad in a dashing bone-white suit with monocle and top hat dragged Nate around and around the courtyard's open roof. 

The Legends had been playing hot potato across several decades with the Dahrks, a death curse, and a device the Waverider’s science team had whipped up for pulling time ghosts out of the finicky timestream, until the ship went crashing into London circa 1884. A local cutpurse and knave named ‘Gentleman’ Jim Craddock had gotten his hands upon the cursed item, and now there was an evil invisible ghost man running around adding to their problems.

Craddock flew through the wall and vanished through it, leaving Nate to hit the stone and bounce off. Ray rolled the attractive but surprisingly calm man to avoid his falling teammate. The ensuing friction only made things worse.

“Sorry about this,” he mumbled. “We’re trying to help, I promise.”

"Wild," grunted the man, who was pressed closely enough that Ray could feel his heart racing with panic. A few feet away, Nate groaned as the silver faded from his be-steeled skin.

"Eh, not too wild,” said Ray. “For us this is pretty normal."

"What?"

“What?”

"No. Wilde. With E. His name. Oscar Wilde," Nate panted, gesturing in the man's vague direction. He drew in a gulp of air before continuing, "Poet. Playwright. Author. Noted historic h--uh. Noted poet.”

“You said poet twice, but it deserves saying twice.” Wilde reached over and shook Nate’s limp hand, beaming like a warm Sunday morning. “My thanks to you.”

Ray let out a soft whine and his head fell back to hit the dirt. _Oh no, he’s hot and sexually compatible._

He tried to think about cold showers and frigid mornings and ice guns and Leonard Snart and Leonard Snart’s sharp-edged smile and his purring voice and _brain that is the exact opposite of what I wanted_. God, he needed to hang out with uglier people.

Mick's heavy boot knocked Ray in the ribs. “Hey. Boy band brigade. You gonna lie there doing your GQ shoot all day? I think our spook ran off.”

Speaking of people who weren’t ugly. Ray ejected Wilde from his person with a mighty force and velocity. He scrambled to his feet and stood next to Mick, all smiles and hands behind his back, definitely not getting handsy with the guy he certainly wasn’t spending his evenings with. 

“Kinda poncy-looking for a guy named Wilde.” Mick’s eyes narrowed at Wilde. “Wait, are you the gay one?”

Wilde brushed himself off as he stood, flicking stray twigs from his fancy jacket. “Well, I was until we were attacked by an angry ghost.” 

“What?”

“What?”

Please resist the urge to make a scared straight joke, Mr. Palmer. Please resist. 

Wilde looked to Nate and asked a question that the team was not unused to hearing in various historical periods. 

Nate sighed. “No, he’s not mad. He’s just…he’s American.”

“Ah.”

\--

“How do you even know who Oscar Wilde is, Mick?”

“Got blackmailed into being in drama club in high school, had to do this boring play about some guy named Earnest. They kicked me out after opening night for eating the props for the tea scene. I figured they were fair game, turns out they were supposed to last all week.”

“What a shame. I’d have loved to see your career as a thespian.”

“I thought Sara was the thespian.”

“And we’re done here. I’ll be in the library researching if anyone but Mick needs me.”

\--

“Morning wood again?” said Mick twelve hours later, sticking his head into the bathroom. Ray, still dripping wet and halfway through drying off, began to try covering himself, and under Mick’s withering glare gave up. Mick was naked except for a pair of loose briefs, which was entirely not helping.

“I just wanted to get up early and take a shower. You know, get the day started right.”

Mick looked up. “Gideon, is the hot water working?”

**Yes, Mr. Rory. However, Mr. Palmer elected to take a cold shower this morning instead.**

Ray frowned and tried to get the rest of him dry with as much dignity as possible. Mick watched him with mild annoyance and a complete lack of lust, which made Ray feel even worse. 

“Seriously, haircut. You woke up with a boner. It happens. _I_ wake up with boners.”

“What do you do with them?”

Mick made the gesture of gripping something and jerking it up and down. “Same thing every other guy does about them. I’m not dead below the waist, Ray.”

Ray squirmed, shoulders tight as he found something that wasn’t Mick to look at. “I didn’t want to be offensive,” he muttered.

“What’s offensive is getting ditched in bed because you feel embarrassed about jerking off around a guy who’s already given you five handjobs. Which makes no goddamn sense. I’m not allergic to dicks, I just don’t get off on them. You keep doing this shit and I’m not letting you sleep in my bed anymore.”

Ray tugged his undershirt on with a huff, just before, Mick grabbed him and yanked him closer. Their lips met and Ray nearly melted all over Mick’s chest. If it hadn’t been for the recency of his shower he’d have needed to get up and take a second shower afterward.

“Just…go find someone and get laid already, haircut,” Mick said, patting Ray’s damp hair. Ray leaned his head on Mick’s scar-marbled chest and closed his eyes. Mick was warm against his chill skin. He wanted to curl up around the man and be held by him forever.

“I don’t want to get laid,” he muttered. “I want you.”

“You want both. Admit it.” Mick’s hand twisted in his shirt, threatening to start choking Ray if he didn’t confess. Ray made a gurgle, tilting backwards until Mick finally let go.

“Yeah, okay, a little, but I have self-control! I’m not going to cheat on you!”

“It ain’t cheating if I don’t want to play the game!” Mick bellowed. “You watch football without me, I’m gonna be pissed. You go fuck someone, I’m not gonna give a rat’s ass. They ain’t getting anything I want, as long as you come back when you’re done cause you still want something I’ve got. And if you don’t…” Mick angrily chewed his lip like a dog worrying at a bone, with an intensity that made Ray worried he was going to chew right through it and make further kisses problematic. 

“Then that’s on you, not me, and you can fuck your fucking right on off.” He released Ray’s shirt and pushed past him to leave the bathroom. 

Ray dressed in silence, then buried his face in a towel so he could do some private screaming. 

\--  
“Okay, so we have a double problem. We can deactivate the time displacer remotely, but the spell Damian Darhk put on Craddock means we can’t do it until we return him to his mortal form. According to this old Hungarian codex, someone inflicted with this spell can only be touched by two things, cold iron--that's meteorite metal--or a virgin.”

“Well, we can manage one of those things. Amaya, get Kendra’s Nth metal mace out of the armory. Ray, go scrape Mick out of the mess hall and let’s get rolling.”

\--

“Will you not leave me be?” cried the ghost, slipping in and out of visibility as a cobra-channeling Amaya chased him around the room. 

“Craddock, we can help you!” Ray called out. He waved the time displacer, which bore surprising resemblance to an RC airplane controller, in Craddock’s direction. “The more you use your powers the more difficult it’ll be for you to come back each time. Your place in the timestream’s getting more and more unstable, and London’s getting more unstable along with you!”

“Help me? With power beyond mortal ken? I’ll be more than a thief, I’ll be a king of thieves! My strength is only continuing to grow!” Craddock flailed and tried to stabilize himself, appearing inside a table and then standing on three consecutive chairs before he managed to keep himself in one place.

“That’s not strength, that’s you losing control!” Behind Craddock, Amaya kept making ‘keep him talking’ gestures, and Ray tried to nod with just his eyes. “Eventually you won’t just be popping forward by half-seconds, it’ll be hours, then days!”

“I’ll not let you keep me from my destiny!” Craddock took aim with a bone-white pistol and fired at Ray’s head. Ray dodged and the bullet hit the wall, then kept right on going through it. Craddock glared at his gun, then threw it over his shoulder. Ray took a step back as the ghost rose, shadows billowing around him. 

“Fine, then I’ll wring your neck myself, insect!” With a roar of rushing wind he dove at Ray, letting out a piercing banshee shriek, only to be knocked off course by a gout of flame from Mick’s gun.

“You want to calm down a bit, Casper?”

“I think not!”

Craddock stood in the flames like a phoenix and let out a maniacal laugh. “Even your sorcerous fire has no effect on me! I am more powerful than your magic, more powerful than a demon prince of hell itself! This city will tremble at the name of the Gentleman Ghost, and I will reign immortal over the whole of—"

Mick, who had enough time during Craddock’s rant to walk right up to the ghoul, decked Craddock hard across his invisible face. Craddock’s body was visible for a split second within his clothes as a shimmering corpse-like form and then he went down like a sack of bricks.

“He’s down! Ray, now!” Amaya shouted.

Ray squeezed the button of the time displacer for dear life. Lightning spattered across Craddock’s form, making him flicker frantically in and out of sight, until he was left solid and smoking on the ground. A single crack cut its way down the length of Craddock’s monocle.

The team gathered around them, staring at Mick, who stared back with growing confusion. 

_Oh, god. Nobody told him. Oh god. I am the worst partner ever._

“Great! Great work, Mick! The, uh, the heat gun fuel must have been made with foreign elements,” Ray said quickly, racing to get ahead of anyone else. “And there must be some still on Mick’s hands from reloading the gun. Completely natural.” He clapped Mick on the shoulder and then shook it, grinning widely as Mick slowly turned to glare down at him.

Amaya raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

Ray laughed “What’s the other option? The guy who thinks the seven deadly sins is a checklist has never had sex?”

Nate stared down Mick, who had found a half-eaten rice krispy in his pocket and was loudly munching it. “Yeah, point. Must have been the fuel. Come on, let’s get Mr. Spooky back to the ship.”

\--

“ _Never?_ ” 

“I ain’t much of a chick magnet, and prostitutes cost good booze money.”

“But, _never?_ ”

“Yeah. Never. And you’re pretty, haircut, but you still ain’t getting past second base. I told you what to do if you have a problem with it. You don’t like it, you can get your bathrobe out of my closet and go fuck _yourself_ instead.”

\--

Oscar “Too Hot (Hot Damn)” Wilde opened the door to find Ray Palmer standing on his doorstep, an emerald broach in his hand. “I think this is yours?" he said sheepishly. "We got it off Craddock before the police took him away. He must have stolen it during the fight earlier. We found your name engraved on it.”

Oscar took it, his fingers lingering in Ray’s palm before drawing back with his prized possession. “How thoughtful of you to return it. It was a gift from a good friend.” His smile melted certain parts of Ray and got other parts frustrated. “Would you like to come inside for a moment?”

No. No. Bad idea. Terrible idea. “Would love to!” said Ray with his chipper golden retriever smile. “Just for a few minutes. My ship is leaving soon—my sailing ship, I mean. At the docks.”

Damnit, where was a cold shower when you needed one. Ray reluctantly let his libido lead him inside, wondering when he’d turned back into a teenager. This had been so much easier to ignore before he started cuddling up to Mick in the evenings. It didn’t help that Wilde was throwing out every signal short of the hanky code. Something about his eyes said Ray should put real consideration into it. Wilde had taken the art of the smoulder and raised it to god-tier levels.

Wilde set the broach delicately on a small shelf. “So, your gigantic street urchin,” he mused, tilting the broach so it caught the light as elegantly as possible. “Was he the same manner of friend as mine?” 

“Yeah. Good friend. Um. You know, that kind of friend. That kind of friend. Like—”

Wilde rolled his eyes. “Yes, I know the kind of friend. No need for euphemisms.”

A goofy grin crossed Ray's face. “I like him. I like him a lot," he confessed quietly.

“And is he…” Wilde’s gaze briefly settled on something over Ray’s left shoulder, then quickly swept back to Ray and made a few ‘go on’ gestures with his fingers.

“Yeah. Sort of. He likes men but he doesn’t, um.” Ray winced, then held up his hands, fingers spread, and repeatedly mashed them together so that the fingers interlocked. “I think we’re together. Romantically. I think. It’s just hard to tell when he communications his emotions in grunts and beer bottles half the time. And we don’t…” The fingers were thrust together again.

“So why be friends with him, when you seem so cultured?” Wilde busied himself with rearranging trinkets on his bookshelves, likely as an excuse to keep Ray talking. Ray stuffed his hands into his pockets and awkwardly rocked forward on the balls of his feet.

“It’s hard to explain.” He’d have to start with Kronos and work his way forward. “We’ve been through a lot together. He’s done a lot for me. He means a lot. Except he hates it when I get all romantic and poetic so I can’t figure out how to explain it to him. He’s a good man who doesn’t want to accept that he’s good, and he’s a man who needs to be loved except he doesn’t like being told he needs it, and I don’t care that he’s an asexual self-proclaimed thug and I’m some goody-two-shoes nerd who has weird dreams about naked Nikola Tesla—actually, you know what?”

Ray stopped, causing Wilde to cock his head with an intrigued expression. “Do tell.”

“It’s more than not minding. I like it.” Raymond was talking faster now, pacing like he’d discovered some grand defiance of physics again. “I like that he makes me try new things. I like that I know how professional wrestling works now, and I like teaching him chemistry so he can make things explode bigger and better, and I like that he’s different than all the whitebread jerks who have fifty doctorates in whatever and that he lets me just talk about things he doesn’t know anything about because he knows it makes me happy, and I like him and I love him.”

Ray paused for breath. His heart was racing and he was giddy enough to float away completely. “And that means more to me than sex, you know?” he said weakly. 

Wilde laughed, slow and silky. “If I might be so bold as to quote myself, and I’m quite bold enough for it, ‘The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future’. If this self-proclaimed thug cares enough about you, he’ll let you care about him in your own way. But let him care about you in yours.” 

He chucked Ray under the cheek with two fingers. “Besides, you’re an educated man with the face of Apollo. If he scorns that, he actually is mad and I’d be happy to comfort you through your dismissal.” Wilde gave him a considering look-over, the kind that Sara gave female pirates and Amazon warriors.

“I ain’t scorning nothing.”

Ray stood up straighter and whirled to see Mick leaning in the doorway, overcoat hanging loose from his shoulders. The large man had a silver candlestick in his hand and his expression was stony.

“How long—have you been here this entire time?”

“Yup.”

“How’d we both miss you?”

“We didn’t,” said Wilde, grinning impishly. “He’s been behind you since you walked in.”

“And you let me just say all that?”

“You said it, I coerced nothing.”

“I think he wanted to see how long you’d keep going before I said anything,” Mick put in. “Cause he’s an asshole.”

Wilde made a small bow. “From you, Mr. Thug, I assume that’s a compliment.”

“It is.” Mick pushed himself from the door and swaggered towards Ray. His face was fixed in the scowl that was his default face, making it hard to tell exactly what was on his mind. Whatever the macho version of resting bitch face was, Mick had it. “So all that, you wanted to say behind my back. Anything you want to actually say to my face?”

Ray’s breath froze in his throat, as surely as if Snart had stuffed his gun down there. The candlestick went around and around in Mick’s hands like the hand of a clock ticking down to god knows what.

Did the kids say #YOLO anymore? 

“Mick? I like you. I really like you.” He stood up straighter, in a formal military-style pose. “And I would like to formally ask you to be my boyfriend in a romantic type sense.”

Mick stared. Ray felt his stomach churn. Wilde wet his lips, gaze going back and forth between them as tension rose in the air. 

There was a soft click as Mick opened the lighter concealed in his palm, clicked it shut again, opened it a few times for good measure. Finally, he spoke.

“That’s the best you can do? I was expecting flowers or some bullshit like that. Rose petals on the goddamn bed. Maybe one of those notes, do you like me, check yes or no.”

“I can get you flowers.” 

Mick scoffed. A smile cracked his rough features as he snapped the lighter closed one more time. “I hate flowers.”

“Okay, I’m getting mixed signals here.”

Mick sighed. “Look, you know me. You know I don’t—"

“Fuck?” said Ray, already feeling the flush rise to his cheeks. The word tasted bad in his mouth.

Mick looked pleasantly surprised. “Yeah,” he said, savoring the chance to make the squeaky-clean boy say a cuss.

“That’s fine. That’s really fine. I’ll manage.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Mick, please. You’re worth it.”

Mick let out an annoyed growl, head tossed back. “All right, okay? All right! Yeah, I’ll boyfriend you or whatever the hell. Christ. We can change our goddamn Facebook status.” Mick looked to Wilde, who had his arms folded in the smuggest pose achievable by a human being. 

“But just go bang the prettyboy already. I’ll be off finding where Wilde hides his booze.”

“Top shelf, oak cabinet in the study and thank you so much for your generosity,” Wilde purred. His arm was already sliding around Ray’s shoulders and Ray found it difficult to resist. 

“Mick, it’s really not necessary—"

“It’s history’s most famous fancy gay guy. I’m not gonna cockblock you on that.”

“Mick—”

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.” 

The words sounded so foreign from Mick’s lips that Ray wondered, for one bizarre moment, if he’d somehow been possessed by a particularly romantic demon who quoted literature Mick couldn’t possibly have read. Mick had spat the lines with the vehemence of ‘fuck you, fuck your mom, and fuck the horse you rode in on’, and the eloquence of someone who…who was trying to get through to Ray on his level when Mick’s level wasn’t cutting it. The same way Ray had been trying to get through to Mick on his.

Ray finished gaping. “You know what I really love about you, Mick?” he managed, his face lighting up. “You keep on surprising me.”

Mick patted his shoulder, his rough grin returning. “Go get your rocks off, Haircut. I’ll save you a drink when we’re done.”

“What a strange man your Patroclus is, Mr. Achilles.” Wilde’s arm moved to down around Ray’s waist, coaxing him towards the stairs. “Not that I’d complain about anyone who quotes my novels as a seduction technique.”

Ray smiled as he was drawn out of sight of his partner. “What can I say, he’s a heel but he’s my heel.”

\--

Mick went to the liquor cabinet, poured himself a glass of whatever was in the decanter, and kept right on walking to the bookcase. His fingers traced down the spines, fresh and new compared to the ones he’d stolen with Len back in the day and read in secret. Good thugs didn’t read anything but porn mags and maybe a trashy action novel. They definitely didn’t read capital-L literature or actually try to write their own.

Fuck, he’d have to tell Ray about that at some point, wouldn’t he?

His fingers caught on a first edition of _The Picture of Dorian Grey_. They hooked into the hardcover and drew it down from the shelf. Mick flicked through pages he hadn’t seen since high school, making satisfied ‘hm’s as he found familiar lines, and wondered if he could bribe Wilde to sign it and then wipe his memory afterward.

The book was tucked away into a pocket of his overcoat. “You will always be fond of me,” Mick muttered, patting his new acquisition proudly. “I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”

**Author's Note:**

> While I'd normally not peg Mick as a reader, I'd point out this is a guy who casually read Dracula for fun during Season 3, and not the Great Illustrated Classics version with the pictures on every other page either. Period horror literature isn't something you read when you're barely literate and just looking for the blood-n-tits. Hence, Mick Literory.


End file.
